Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Saul Bass. EVERETT COLLECTION. REPRODUCED BY
PERMISSION.
named in the credits, no matter who did the actual work.
At Paramount in the 1950s, for example, the name of
Hal Pereira (1905–1983) appears as art director on virtually
every front credit the studio produced; at MGM
in the 1940s, the name of Cedric Gibbons (1893–1960);
at Twentieth Century Fox in the same decade, the name
of Lyle Wheeler (1905–1990). Contemporary main title
sequences are sometimes strikingly abbreviated for dramatic
effect. Steven Spielberg (b. 1946), for example,
typically runs his credits only at the end of his films,
retaining the actual film title card—if that—at the beginning.
Because audiences are somewhat less likely to read
titles at the end of a film, this practice, while modestly
withholding the director’s credit until the first position
after the finale, also reduces the billing of actors and crew
(an effect somewhat mitigated by the intensive advertising
that all new blockbusters receive). The end credit roll,
which originally repeated only the names of the principal
cast (‘‘A Good Cast Is Worth Repeating,’’ end credits at
Universal Pictures uniformly began, starting in the early
1930s), now tends to contain all of the members of the
cinematographer’s gaffing crew and the grip crew that
handles the camera; all of the carpenters and painters
who work for the art director; everyone involved with
sound, dialogue, and foley track recording, as well
as those who cater, chauffeur, assist, insure, negotiate,
supply, and in any other way are connected with the
film. At the end of Titanic (1997), the extensive end
credits include ‘‘inferno artists,’’ ‘‘water systems engineer,’’
‘‘etiquette coach’’ and a ‘‘thanks’’ to the Mexican
Minister of Tourism.
In 1942, an attempt to do away with full end credits
proved unsuccessful. By law, copyright acknowledgments
for all songs and musical tracks used must be included by
producers in the end credits. With productions becoming
increasingly more complex and involving more and more
workers, end credit sequences have become notoriously
extensive. For Superman (1978), 457 end credits roll for
twelve minutes, about one-tenth of the entire film’s
length. In Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone,
1968), the end credits take up more than twelve minutes.
The end credits of Jurassic Park (1993) list 519 names.
BILLING
Credits
The billing in a motion picture is a set of hotly negotiated
and legally contracted formulae that dictate the size in
points of a screened name relative to the size of the name
of the film. The names of actors and technical personnel
must appear on posters and all other advertising for the
film and in the opening credits. Other considerations
include the individuality of a credit—that is, whether
the worker’s name appears alone onscreen or along with
others’—and the placement of the contributor’s credit
within the syntax of the credit sequence, relative to the
name of the film. Writers’ credits—awarded onscreen
since 1941—are interesting in this regard. A film
‘‘Written by Joseph Jones and James Smith’’ is one in
which the principal writing, the bulk of the writing, or
the dominant writing was done by Mr. Jones; however, a
film ‘‘Written by Joseph Jones & James Smith’’ is one in
which the two writers equally shared in the creative
process. Regardless of its point size—and this usually
matches that of the principal stars—the director’s screen
credit has been mandated by the Directors Guild since
its 1939 agreement with motion picture producers as the
final credit to appear before the action begins. As of
1972, without a specific waiver from the Directors
Guild, no film could credit more than one director.
Sometimes a director wishes in the end to dissociate
himself from a film; traditionally, the credit ‘‘Directed
by Alan Smithee’’ has been used to signify this. Actors
have also employed this credit.
Since the mid-1990s, directors and writers have been
wrangling over what is known as the ‘‘possessory’’ screen
credit, one frequently received by directors like Rob
Reiner (b. 1947) and Ridley Scott (b. 1937): ‘‘a film by
Rob Reiner’’; ‘‘a Ridley Scott film.’’ Screenwriters have
argued that the director’s possessory credit reinvigorates
the notion of the auteur, in a production era in which no
one person can reasonably take credit for all of what is
onscreen. Stanley Kubrick’s (1928–1999) credit in 2001:
SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 385